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CSPLYeu: A 30cm by 30cm hardcover cosplay photobook containing over 50 cosplayers from 12 European countries

iCrowdNewswire - Jun 22, 2015

CSPLYeu is a project that finds its birth in the creative mind of Kyman Cheng, a photographer and retoucher from The Netherlands. Together with Stefan Dorresteijn he set out to unite the European cosplay community in a high quality product, befitting of Europe’s incredible cosplay talent.

In October 2014 we took a look at Europe as a cosplay community and found that while the United States and Asia are very heavily represented in combined, professionally developed products, Europe seems to lag behind. CSPLYeu is here to fill the void. With the help of cosplay fans and using Kickstarter for crowdfunding we’ll travel through 12 countries doing photoshoots with over 50 cosplayers to create a crowdfunded, crowdsourced high quality hardcover photobook that truly represents the European cosplay community.

The Book

The CSPLYeu photobook will contain pictures from over 50 cosplayers originating from over 12 countries. Cosplay is a form of storytelling so our photoshoots will put cosplayers in their character’s natural environment to capture the complete story in a single image. The book featuring more than 50 cosplayer in a 150 page, 30x30cm hardcover format, will be self-published and printed in Shenzhen, shipped to Rotterdam and then shipped to our backers from either The Hague, Netherlands or Cologne, Germany. Alongside the book we’ll be creating and selling prints of images featured and not featured in the book.

The Cosplayers

Since October we’ve gathered over 50 cosplayers who want to work together to make this project happen. Having to limit our selection to around 50 cosplayers was hard to say the least but we think we chose a beautifully varied group of people. The book will feature a large variety of crafting skills such as armor crafting, leatherworking and sewing. We’ve also tried to get cosplays from all kinds of media so the book will feature characters from games, anime, movies, tv shows and really any other platform you could think of. Instead of just contacting the 50 most popular European cosplayers we selected those with the highest level of skill who would fit the idea of the book the best and we feel we’ve achieved that. The cosplayers are excited and the photoshoots have been scheduled so we’re all ready to go!

The Blog

During the book’s production process we’ll write cosplayer profiles, travel updates and other fun articles on the CSPLYeu blog. Alongside the standard blog we’ll have a backers-only blog where we will share exclusive information and behind the scenes pictures of the production process. By backing our project you become a part of what we’re trying to do so we want to include you in our every move.

The Breakdown

We’re asking you for money so the least we can do is tell you what we need it for. We’re looking to buy our books in bulk to save money in the long run so we have to order at least 750 books which comes at considerable cost. Combined with the travel costs of traveling through 12 countries in two months and the shipping costs we’re covering we expect to need about €7,500 to make this project happen. We will most likely not sell all our books which leaves us with a chance to keep making money from this project. The CSPLYeu photobook is an amazing start to what will hopefully be a great future of cosplay related projects. We want this kickstarter project to truly be a building block for us to build more projects on without having to look at the community for additional money. Even after we’ve shipped all the books and prints to our backers we’re going to continue creating products for the cosplay community. We’re here to stay.